Social media can be a great way for teachers to learn about new tools and to interact with other educators. For this week's Tech Tip Tuesday, I am focusing on how educators can utilize Twitter. Twitter was started in 2006, and soon after it began, teachers started using it to share resources and ideas from all over the world. Twitter is considered a micro-blogging platform; Tweets are restricted to 140 characters with a few exceptions. This makes it a great way to engage in conversation, share concise ideas, and link to useful websites, blog posts, and other educational resources.

If you need more help, please send me a message! Once you have set up a Twitter account, here's a list of educators I would recommend following. After you have followed several, Twitter will suggest other accounts to follow. I follow all the people I am recommending, and they are all active on Twitter and share great information and resources. Several of the guides linked above give follower recommendations as well.

My final recommendation with respect to Twitter is a service called Twurly. I will admit that I don't make time for Twitter every day; in fact, I will sometimes go several weeks without really checking out my Twitter feed. However, I still like to know what people are sharing on Twitter, especially what resources are being shared by other educators. Twurly allows me to see all of the great links without having to weed through my Twitter feed. Once you sign-up on Twurly's website with your Twitter account, Twurly sends a daily email with the best links that were shared by the people you follow on Twitter. It only takes me about a minute to scan through the 50 or so headlines of the shared links to decide which links (if any), I want to click on and read about. Here's a small sample of the email I received today:

Twitter can be a lot to take in. The best advice I have received about it is don't worry about trying to catch all of the information and resources. It is impossible. Instead, dip your toe in every once in a while and look for resources that will help you improve just one thing in your teaching practice.

Do you use Twitter to improve your practice or to learn about educational resources? What educators would you recommend that teachers follow?